Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/732

712 name of San Alberto, and the first provincial was Father Elisco de los Mártires, who arrived in Mexico in 1594, Father Pedro de los Apóstoles governing in his absence as vicario provincial. For divers reasons the Carmelites gave up the administration of the parish of San Sebastian in 1598, and occupied the convent, which they held from that time. The sons of Saint Therese were blamed for that abandonment, but a few years afterward the wisdom of the step was recognized when the ordinances demanded and obtained the full control of the parishes. A convent of bare-footed Carmelites was founded October 1593 at Valladolid, Michoacan, and another August 20, 1597, at Celaya, Guanajuato, whose first prior was the venerable Father Pedro de San Hilarion. In the course of its existence in Mexico the Carmelite organization became very wealthy.

The Benedictines, or friars of Saint Benedict, came to Mexico in 1589, and the next year founded the monastery and priory of Nuestra Señora de Monserrate, in the southern part of the city of Mexico. The founder and first prior was Friar Luis de Boil, a man of stern piety, the greatest of iconoclasts, and of whom it is said that he destroyed one hundred and sixty thousand idols.

Of all the religious orders that labored in New Spain, the Franciscans, as we have seen, were the first authorized to engage in missionary work by the crown. Their first province, in the city of Mexico, founded in 1524 under the name of Santo Evangelio, became the mother of all Franciscan provinces in America. Gradually its area enlarged, until it was found necessary to make territorial subdivisions, which